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Epilogue
Resurgent Islamic Fundamentalism as an Integrative Factor
in the Politics of Africa and the Middle East
Nehemia Levtzion
Works Cited
Contributors / Collaborateurs
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Michael Frishkopf
Rsum
Convenablement interprt La Musique islamique en Afrique offre aux
tudes africaines un outil analytique utile lexploration des relations
entre lexprience affective individuelle et les structures sociales, les
valeurs, et les concepts culturels que la musique la fois reflte et
soutient dans les rgions musulmanes. La diversit musicale islamique
non-discursive a facilit lexpansion islamique en rendant possibles de
puissantes adaptations affectives des conditions socio-culturelles. Les
pratiques soniques de lIslam constituent des sites centraux pour la
production sociale charge dmotion de lIslam, module au niveau
local, et appuyant la dfense de lidentit et des normes musulmanes. La
diversit de la musique islamique reflte aussi une histoire riche en interactions culturelles, du fait que la musique est un baromtre sensible des
conditions sociales et historiques. Pourtant, la diffusion a cr galement
une certaine uniformit musicale, liant entre elles les utilisations des sons
travers des pays lointains et consolidant des sentiments communs
lidentit culturelle musulmane en Afrique.
Abstract
Suitably interpreted, Islamic music in Africa provides African Studies
with a useful analytical tool for probing the relation between affective
individual experience and the social structures, values, and cultural
concepts which music both reflects and supports in Muslim areas. Nondiscursive Islamic musical diversity has facilitated Islamic expansion by
enabling affectively powerful adaptations to local socio-cultural conditions. The sonic practices of Islam constitute central sites for the affectively charged social production of Islam, as locally inflected, and for the
contestation of Muslim identity and norms. The diversity of Islamic
music also reflects a rich history of cultural interactions, as music is a
sensitive barometer of social and historical conditions. Yet diffusions
have bestowed a certain musical consistency as well, linking sound prac-
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Introduction
What is Islamic music in Africa? What range of social-sonic
phenomena does this analytical concept cover? Of what use is it to
African Studies? Before addressing these questions, one must begin
with a critique, for the phrase is decidedly problematic. The
concept of music can never be wholly liberated from its long
history within the dominant European discursive tradition. In that
tradition, music centers on a cultivated art of sonic beauty, in
which the purity of the aesthetic experience is valued over its
socio-cultural embeddedness and individual embodiment. Such
music is sharply distinguished from linguistic, visual, and bodykinetic arts. Musical performance takes place in particular (mostly
secular) social contexts, featuring the concert in which
performers and audience are distinctly separated, and where
the practice of disembodied contemplative listening and its associated ideal of aesthetic pleasure are primary. All this is supported
by parallel traditions of writing music, and writing about music,
historically and theoretically. As a result of this history, the
concept of music has accumulated a cluster of associated qualities frequently inducing erroneous distinctions when applied elsewhere.
These errors are particularly salient when music is applied to
the diverse profusion of largely orally-transmitted social-sonic
practices in Africa, in which sonorous, verbal, and body-kinetic
performance types are usually inextricably interconnected, while
aesthetic and social-ritual functions are often inseparable. Is it
really useful to group all this under music, given this terms
weighty European baggage, and the absence of a comparable term
in African languages?
The Islamic qualifier introduces new problems, not least
because it is not always easy to define Islam in an area as large as
Africa. Exclusive definitions appear arbitrary (even ideological),
while inclusive definitions entail a heterogeneity that calls into
question the meaningfulness of the term. Beyond such definitional
problems, the qualifier Islamic is ambiguous, as it can be taken
either in a narrower sense (related to Islamic religion), or a
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which presents the same essential meanings across Muslim societies, meaning varies dramatically within the homologous
contexts grouped within each context-type, such as the Sufi hadra
(since each tariqa features distinctive saintly figures) or the spirit
possession ritual (which often exhibits local pre-Islamic cultural
features). Finally, one must consider popular music genres carrying
Islamic themes, relatively disengaged from specific social contexts,
but embedded instead in local or global media-commodity systems.
Formal ritual genres, prescribed by Islamic law, center on
vocalized text, often at the expense of musical sound. Musical
instruments are infrequent, and insistence upon use of the sacred
liturgical language (Arabic) may preclude local understanding.
Here variation is primarily in the domain of vocal and social
aspects of performance style.
More informal festival genres, associated with supererogatory
devotions, exhibit both sonic and textual diversity, often drawing
upon local languages, poetic genres, and musical traditions yet
similar genres frequently arise in disparate locales in response to
parallel devotional concepts (for example, madih, praise, usually
for the Prophet Muhammad). Many genres (sometimes textless,
such as drumming) develop religious meanings only via contextual
association with religious festivals. Life-cycle genres are more
diverse still, even more open to local textual and musical sources,
carrying Islamic meanings but closely connected to local culture.
With the introduction of Islam to a region, formal ritual genres are
necessarily injected, whereas festival and life-cycle contexts tend
to absorb pre-Islamic practices, subsequently remaining open to
extra-Islamic ones, or helping to define a localized Islam.
Subsequent waves of Islamic reformism (especially prevalent in the
present day, as a form of Islamic globalization centered on principal
centers of Islamic learning and practice, such as Cairo and Saudi
Arabia) may clash with these earlier localizations.
Life-cycle contexts tend to draw upon a general category of
musician who works outside the religious sphere and frequently
is not regarded as a religious specialist per se. Conversely, religious
performers and genres may crossover to the popular music world,
transformed (by new instruments, contexts, and meanings) while
retaining religious associations via text, sound, intention, and
history. In particular, Islamic festival contexts often foster musical
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[Orwin 2001, 69]) (in Swahili, [Topan 2001]). Besides Quran, these
themes are primarily expressed in sung poetry, known in Arabic as
inshad dini (religious hymns).
One naturally finds a wide distribution of Arabic terminology
for Islamic music, though local terms are also used, especially for
the instrumentarium, which centers on frame drums and reed
flutes due to supportive Prophetic hadiths, and long-standing Sufi
traditions.2 Arabic terms tend to acquire a religious hue outside the
Arabic-speaking world, where the Arabic language is nearly coextensive with the Islamic domain. Thus, whereas the Arabic word
qasida simply means poem, in non-Arabic speaking areas the
loan-word qasida often refers to a religious devotional song.
Due to centrality of text, vocalists are central and vital to most
genres of Islamic music. The most general terms for religious singer
in Arabic are munshid (hymnodist) or maddah (praiser, that is, for
the Prophet Muhammad). Other local terms are introduced below.
Performers may also be locally known as singers as religious
shades into popular music. Female performers are common, particularly within domestic life-cycle contexts; thus Hausa women
chant poems (waka) treating religious topics, such as shari`a, veiling, and pilgrimage (Mack 2004, 13, 14, 133-34).
Throughout the Muslim world, the most common themes are
petitions (Arabic: ibtihalat to God; tawassul to Prophet and saints),
and praise (Arabic: madih). While Allah is broadly glorified and
supplicated, detailed panegyric is directed primarily to the Prophet
(madih nabawi), centered on appearance and hagiography, expressing loving devotion, calling for God to bless him (salawat), and
requesting intercession (shafa`a). Such praise is believed to confer
spiritual benefits on singer and listener alike. Though African oral
literary traditions of praise exist apart from (and prior to) Islamic
ones, the two sets of traditions clearly harmonized.
For instance, traditional Manding griots (praise singers) of West
Africa trace their ancestry to Surakata, praise-singer for the Prophet
himself (Conrad 1985, 39-40). Likewise, Fulani Muslim reformer
`Uthman ibn Fudi (usually transliterated, Osman dan Fodiyo, as per
local pronunciation) (1754-1817), who banned much music and
dance, nevertheless strove to convert traditional Hausa praise
singers into Islamic panegyrists, writing:
Singer, stop, do not waste your time
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Ritual Contexts
Daily Prayer (Salah)
Ordinary congregational prayer comprises a series of public sonic
genres, including the preliminary call to prayer (adhan) performed
by the muadhdhin (muezzin), Quranic recitation (tilawa; also
discussed below) performed by the qari (reader), du`a, and other
short, intoned devotional texts. Such performances are non-metric
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(there is no regular meter), and strictly vocal. Egyptian muadhdhinin may precede adhan with melodic supplication and madih,
especially at dawn (Frishkopf 2000). For Friday prayer a khutba
(sermon), often delivered in local languages, precedes prayer proper.
Being obligatory (fard) salah is highly-regulated in its textual and
contextual aspects. However, its sonic aspect flexible in vocal
timbre, phonetics, stress, tempo, and melodic style is subjected
to local linguistic and musical treatments (for example, among
Yoruba, see Adegbite 1989, 35; L. Anderson 1971, 151-52). While
adhan differences are partly attributable to performer idiosyncrasies, regional and contextual varieties can often be identified;
compare North African (Chants religieux ... au Maghreb; Morocco
I: The Music of Islam and Sufism in Morocco), Egyptian (La
Chadhiliyyah 1999) and West African (Schulze 1965) versions (L.
Anderson 1971, 154-56). Yet adhan and tilawa have also infused
Arab sonic style (such as melisma, ornament, modality, solo nasal
voice) throughout Muslim Africa, influencing music generally
(Charry 2000a, 5; Charry 2000b, 546; Danielson 1991, 114).
Technically, the adhans melodic origins are African, for the
first performer was the Prophets Ethiopian muezzin Bilal ibn
Rabah, a fact significant in two other African performance
contexts: the Moroccan Gnawa derdeba ceremony, and the griot
tradition of West Africa. Gnawas claim lineal descent from Bilal,
while Manding griots praise Bilali Bounama as ancestor of
Sunjata, founder of the Empire of Mali (Schuyler 1981, 3; Langlois
1998, 147; Conrad 1985, 35). In Senegal, the adhan is typically
performed by griots (McLaughlin 1997, 564). Prayer performance
differs slightly among the Shi`a (Shiites, mainly in East Africa); for
instance, the Shi`i adhan includes an additional phrase, come to
the best of works.
Public Sermon (Khutba)
When detached from Friday prayer, prose sermonizing (wa`z) can
be considered an independent genre, appearing in a wide variety of
contexts (funerals, festivals); such sermons may become an independent spectacle, even valued as entertainment, and distributed
on cassette, as in Egypt or in West Africa (Launay 1977, 149-50;
Launay 1997, 445-46).
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Festival Contexts
Ramadan
The ninth month in the Islamic calendar, Ramadan (month of fasting from dawn to sunset) subsumes two principal festival contexts
containing musical performances:
(1) Evenings, highlighting religious songs celebrating Ramadan, the
Quran, and the Prophet, and supplicating God. Ibtihalat and
tawashih (featuring classic performers, such as Sayyid alNaqshabandi and Taha al-Fashni) are often heard on Egyptian
radio (Frishkopf 2000), along with tilawa. In Kano, royal Hausa
musicians perform Gaisuwar barka da shan ruwa during the
last ten nights of Ramadan (Besmer 1972, 195-96), while
members of the Qadiriyya tariqa roam the streets beating a
single membrane drum while chanting praises of the Prophet
(Ames 1973, 276 note 8). In the Comoro islands, mrenge (boxing
matches) are accompanied by drumming after the evening meal
(Ottenheimer 1970, 460).
(2) Mornings, when performers rouse the devout for their pre-dawn
meal (Arabic: sahur; Yoruba: saari). This latter function has
generated a colourful assortment of sonic traditions. In
Marrakech, ghaita (oboe) and nfir (trumpet) play melodies based
on religious chants from mosque minarets (Morocco I: The
Music of Islam and Sufism in Morocco, track #5; Chottin 1927).
In Egypt, the masahharati awakens the faithful by calling names
and chanting religious formulae, accompanied by a small drum
(baza). Among the Dagbamba (Northern Ghana), a jenjili (musical bow) player circulates, playing and singing (Chernoff 1979,
131). Yoruba youth may perform were or ajisaari, whose vocal
style is influenced by Islamic cantillations (Adegbite 1989, 3940; Waterman 1990, 31); formerly apala praise singers accompanied by rhythm sticks, and dundun drummers, also used to
parade from house to house. Drum patterns are taken from the
general repertoire of Yoruba traditional music. Later, apala
combined with drums and agidigbo (sansa) to produce evening
Ramadan entertainment (Euba 1971, 178; Adegbite 1989, 37;
Waterman 1990, 85).
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Mawlid al-Nabi
The season surrounding the Prophets birthday (12 Rabi` al-Awwal)
is celebrated via musical performances of biographical and panegyric texts (also called mawlid), as well as madih generally.
Sometimes the mawlid is performed on other occasions, or even as
a weekly devotion. Various mawlid texts have been composed
based primarily on the classical sira nabawiyya attributed to Ibn
Ishaq (born c.704), as rendered by the Egyptian, Ibn Hisham (died
828 or 833). In Egypt, the three mawlids most frequently performed
are Barzanji (by the Medinan Ja`far ibn Hasan al-Barzanji, died
1765), Munawi (by the Cairene `Abd al-Rauf al-Munawi, died
1621), and al-Busiris Burda.
Besides Arabic texts, local languages and poetic forms, as well
as musical resources, are expressed during mawlid. Desert Berbers
(Zenatas) of Gourara, Algeria perform ahallil, haunting nocturnal
vocal-flute-percussion songs of praise (Sahara 2000). The Vai of
Liberia sing religious songs during this period, which they call
morodi (Music of the Vai of Liberia). In northern Ghana, the weeklong Damba festival includes traditional singing, drumming, and
dancing honouring the Prophet, and the chief (Corke et al. 2000;
Chernoff 1985, 124; Kinney 1970). Festive and entertaining recitations (kalan), centered on sermons, are performed among the
Dyula of Ivory Coast for Donba, the Prophets birthday; spoken text
is interspersed with song (Launay 1997, 445-46). Hausa royal musicians praise singers, drummers, and instrumentalists perform
Sallar Gana for the mawlid (Besmer 1972, 288; Hausa 2006), while
members of the Qadiriyya chant madih to the accompaniment of a
drum, as during Ramadan (Ames 1973, 276 note 8).
Some of the most elaborate mawlid performances are found in
East Africa, where enormous sums are expended on a mawlid
season lasting more than six months (Schacht 1965, 96). In
Lamu, Kenya, the maulidi (= mawlid) is highly treasured, observed
as a month-long series of readings (kusoma) culminating in a
one-week festival. Each reading comprises solo chanting of texts
interspersed with collective madih (qasida). There are five forms,
all save one in Arabic; except for the maulidi Barzanji, these may
be accompanied by drum (tari, kigoma), flute (nay), and stylized
male dancing. Self-referential mawlid songs defend the performance of mawlid music against its fundamentalist detractors,
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`Id Festivals
`Id Festivals, liturgically centred on supererogatory prayers (salat
al-`Id) marking the end of Ramadan fast (`Id al-Fitr) and the sacrifice of Hajj (`Id al-Adha), are sanctioned by Prophetic Hadith; these
typically incorporate special takbir chants, with fixed Arabic texts,
whose sonic aspect evinces local linguo-musical influence.
However, beyond prayer, the precise form of celebration is not
prescribed, so `Id festivals capaciously absorb a large number of
local performance genres, carrying pre-Islamic influence, or
exhibiting local developments and adaptations. Many songs reference the `Id textually, though musical content varies radically:
monophonic `Id songs in Egypt (Frishkopf 2000) contrast with
polyphony of the Rashaida, an Arab tribe of Eritrea (Music in the
World of Islam 1: track #7). Some `Id performances, not religious
per se, acquire Islamic meanings by association: among the Ivory
Coast Dyula, women and children dance (Launay 1977, 149), while
Mandinka jalis (griots) offer ordinary praise singing (Knight 1973,
xiv).
Among Yoruba, dundun drum orchestras accompany processions of chiefs to and from prayer ground (Euba 1971, 176-77);
sakara may also appear the most famous performer was Abibus
Oluwa, the preacher (Waterman 1990, 36-39). A famous hadith
suggests that the Prophet advocated musical celebrations during
the `Id; correspondingly, Othman dan Fodiyo criticized the Hausas
pagan ways but nevertheless allowed the kettle-drum to be beaten
at the advent of the `Id (Ames 1973, 273), and elaborate `Id festival
music continues to be performed there by court musicians
(maroka), including praise singers, drums, horns, shawms, trumpets, bells, and rattles, for a series of court events and processions
(Besmer 1974; Besmer 1972, 256-77; Ames 1973, 256). Spectacular
all-night drum history narrations, involving a lead singer-drummer
supported by a chorus of up to a hundred others, and climaxing in a
dance (bangumanga), are performed for both `Id festivals among
the Dagbamba of Ghana (Chernoff 1985, 110-11; Corke et al. 2000).
Ashura
Shiites in East Africa (primarily of South Asian origin) celebrate
Ashura (commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn and his family
at Karbala) with majalis (rituals centered on sung elegies and
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Life-cycle Contexts
Life-cycle contexts, such as births, circumcisions, weddings, and
funerals, celebrated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, may be
viewed as only equivocally Islamic or even secular and hence
are more likely to accumulate or retain a variety of genres and
musical features, resulting in complex convergences, synergies,
and syncretisms between Islamic styles (as marked by text and
sound) and popular ones. In these familial occasions one generally
observes greater liberality in use of musical instruments, musical
sounds, dance, and mixing of the sexes. Due to both content and
pre-Islamic associations, such performances were often targeted by
reformers as un-Islamic (for example, Ames 1982, 136-37). Yet
prohibitions typically are less enforceable for domestic contexts
peripheral to the sphere of Islamic worship.
Religious songs, especially madih, are commonly performed at
life-cycle events. In Egypt, inshad performed for circumcisions,
weddings, or memorials may incorporate popular Arabic songs and
instruments (Frishkopf 2002a). Hausa Bandiri music transforms
Hindi film songs into madih nabawi (Larkin 2002). In Kenya, a
birth may be celebrated with mawlid performance (Boyd 1981, 88);
in Zanzibar (Tanzania) a mawlid qasida is performed in celebration
of a wedding (Zanzibar: Music of Celebration, track #6). The Dyula
traditionally perform sermons (kalan) for funerals and memorials
(Launay 1997, 445); a new ritual deploys kalan for weddings as well
(Launay 1977, 148-50). Comorians perform the deba comprising
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responsorial songs praising the prophets, accompanied by percussion often closing with a solo ilahi (devotion to God), for various
family occasions; weddings are celebrated with music and dance
called tari, filled with praise of the Prophet (Comores 1994). The
Comoro daira (circle, or gathering) of the local Shadhiliya
tariqa, including chant and movement, is performed in memoriam
on the seventh and fortieth nights after death, as well as on the final
day of wedding festivities (Ottenheimer 1970, 460). Yoruba have
performed waka and sakara for weddings (Euba 1971, 177-78;
Waterman 1990, 39). The Songhai (Niger) circumcision ritual
(prayers, songs, tilawa, dancing, and drumming) fuses Islamic with
pre-Islamic performance elements, illustrating how functional
homology creates pathways for continuity and syncretism (Miner
1942, 621-31).
Sufi Context-types
Sufi orders (turuq, literally ways) are voluntary religious associations (albeit with strong hereditary tendencies), usually named for
a founder-saint, whose way they perpetuate. Often erroneously
counterpoised to orthodoxy, Sufi orders have been ubiquitous
and socially mainstream throughout much of Islamic history as a
means of facilitating spiritual growth beyond what is required by
the exoteric ritual and belief of shari`a, and as a means of providing
a supportive social organization. Sufis emphasize love of God,
Prophet, and saints as a means of self-transformation sometimes
even to the point of self-annihilation (fana) or Divine Union (ittihad). Each tariqa group, providing for the spiritual growth of its
members, generates a unique context for public sonic performance,
expressing its characteristic world-view shaped by a particular spiritual-social system and doctrines, though these contexts tend to be
quasi-homologous in their common emphases upon spiritual
development, spiritual hierarchy, and mediation. With a spiritual
guide (shaykh, marabout), members gather at a meeting place
(mosque, zawiya, khanqa) for weekly supererogatory devotional
liturgies (hadra, dhikr, majlis, halaqa, daira, karama, layliyya),
including remembrance of God (dhikr), love and praise for the
Prophet and saints, requests for intercession, and religious guidance, according to the tariqas particular traditions. Language
performance (Frishkopf 1999) often musical dominates on
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these occasions.
While mainstream sonic genres (tilawa, madih, wa`z, mawlid)
are common, the most distinctive Sufi genre is dhikr (dikr, zikr,
dhikiri). As a genre, dhikr implies collective rhythmic (sometimes
melodic) chanting of Divine Names, often accompanied by movement, accelerating to a climax, and possibly leading to ecstatic
trance (wajd, hal). Alongside dhikr, religious chanters
(munshidun) may perform poetry (inshad Sufi), often composed by
tariqa founders in local languages, including coded mystical
expressions, and standard themes of praise, devotion, and supplication to God and the Prophet, but also localized to the tariqas
saints (awliya, marabouts) and regional musical styles. In solo
improvisations, or choral responsorial formats, and sometimes
with instrumental accompaniment, inshad may also appear without dhikr, as a catalyst for spiritual connection; such mystical
concerts are called sama`, and draw on local musical traditions
(Hear: Fez 2002; Al-Samaa 2004).
Following al-Ghazali (died 1111), Sufism is generally tolerant
of music with a spiritual message; though frame drums and reed
flutes are often preferred, many local instruments are absorbed into
the mix. Sufi emphases upon spiritual love and metaphorical interpretation generate ambiguity between sacred and secular love; any
elevated love song supports Sufi interpretations, and may be used
in Sufi ritual. As the tolerance and strong social fabric of turuq
became an important means by which Islam was disseminated
through sub-Saharan Africa after the twelfth century, local musical
styles were naturally absorbed into Sufi liturgies. Sub-Saharan
orders often feature drumming, polyrhythm, and pentatonicism,
alongside Arabic elements. Even a reformer such as Othman dan
Fodiyo, who initially opposed certain musical traditions, was later
softened by mysticism, approving of madih and music in his
Najm al-Ikhwan (1812) (Erlmann 1986, 31). Only in the twentieth century did the twin forces of Saudi-inspired Islamism and
secularism lead to the turuqs general decline (For general background, see Trimingham 1998; Schimmel 1975; Waugh 1989;
Waugh 2005).
Some tariqas (Tijaniyya, Qadiriyya, Shadhiliyya) are widespread throughout Africa; others are more localized (Khatmiyya in
the Nile Valley, Mourides in Senegal, Aisawa and Sulamiyya in
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Sectarian Contexts
While most African Muslims are Sunni, isolated Ibadi, Ithna`ashari
Shi`a (Rizvi and King 1973, 12), Bohra (Amiji 1975), and Nizari
Isma`ili groups exist as well (Ranja 2003). These groups feature
unique sonic genres and contexts. The Shi`a Ashura has already
been mentioned. Inhabiting the Mzab (six hundred to eight
hundred kilometres south of Algiers) are Ibadi Berbers, practicing
distinctive patterns of Islamic chant (Alport 1954, 34-42). Nizari
Isma`ilis of South Asian descent are concentrated in East Africa; a
central liturgical practice is melodic recitation of ginan, featuring
poetry of founding pirs, and a South Asian melodic ethos, often
with tabla and harmonium accompaniment (Gillani 2004; Music
in the World of Islam, 1: track #1; Mzab 2006).
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century Egypt trained in religious contexts, starting with the traditional schools for mastering Quranic recitation (kuttab) and
continuing with tawashih diniyya and Sufi dhikr; shifting to the
popular domain, they might continue to perform explicitly religious material (Shaykh Naqshabandi), or dwell on ambiguous,
elevated Sufi love poetry (Shaykhs `Ali Mahmud and Yusuf alManyalawi), or simply enjoy the connotations of authority, authenticity, and propriety bestowed by Islamic training (such as Shaykh
Sayyid Darwish and Umm Kulthum) (Danielson 1991, 114-23) even
while performing an entirely secular repertoire, provided it maintained a suitable level of decorum.
Such crossovers are far less common in Egypt today, not only
because the kuttab has declined (replaced by governmental
schools), but also with the diminished importance of the Sufi
sphere and as popular music and religious domains find themselves
increasingly at odds: the former increasingly commercialized and
eroticized, the latter increasingly puritanical (sometimes to the
point of rejecting overly-elaborate Quranic recitation). Thus when
Nubian pop star Mohamed Mounir produced a post-9/11 album of
Islamic music in 2002 entitled Earth ... Peace he found himself
embroiled in controversy. Emphasizing Islam as a religious of peace
and love, he sang the spilling of any blood is deemed sinful by
God. But the music video for this song was banned from Egyptian
television, because its petition (madad, help us) to the Prophet
was not palatable to the conservative religious establishment
(MSN Arabia; Mounir 2002).
Recorded media may play a critical role in the shift to the popular sphere, providing broader markets and disengaging context. In
the 1970s, Nigerian fuji (including trap set, synthesizers, and traditional Nigerian percussion) emerged from Ramadan ajisaari, popularized by early recordings of Muslim musicians Kollington Ayinla
and Chief Ayinde Barrister. While fuji per se is not Islamic, fuji
musicians and majority of fans are Muslims (though many are
Christian, too), and record companies release special fuji LPs on
major Muslim holidays (Barber and Waterman 1995, 244;
Waterman 1990, 150-51, 231).
In Senegals bustling music scene, popular singers such as
Youssou NDour (2004), Cheikh Lo (1996), and Baaba Maal (1998)
include on each album one or more songs praising and invoking
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local Sufi saints, especially Amadou Bamba, his disciple Ibra Fall,
and El Hajj Malik Sy; though such music is played in nightclubs and
bars, it also expresses a religious message. This phenomenon is
testimony to the strength of Sufism there, and reflects also the
influence of secular griot praise traditions which Senegalese pop
stars have inherited (McLaughlin 2000, 191; McLaughlin 1997).
The influence of these saints extends beyond Senegal, for example,
Mauritanian griot-star Malouma who praises Amadou Bamba
(Miadeh 1998). Guinean griot Mory Kante mixes the call to prayer
in one popular song (Kante 1987, track #3). The mixing of sacred
and secular is not unproblematic, however; religious conservatives
sharply criticized Cheikh Ismael Lo for recording a song
(Wassalia) drawing upon El Hajj Maliks hagiography of
Mohammed from the gammu, since his cassettes are played in bars
and at parties, contexts considered inappropriate for devotional
poetry (McLaughlin 2000, 199-200).
The 1970s witnessed the emergence of popular Moroccan
groups such as Nass el-Ghiwane and Jil Jilala, which drew eclectically from Moroccan folk and Sufi heritage (including `Isawiyya and
Gnawa), in combination with western popular music (Schuyler
2002). These Moroccan groups also illustrate their transcendence
of the local popular scene by touring for Western audiences
throughout Europe and North America.
Western consumption generates at least three distinctive categories of African Islamic popular music (all of which tend to be filed
as world music): what may be termed global ethnographic,
world beat, and global pop musics. Global ethnographic
includes the numerous recordings and festival performances of
what is perceived as authentic (that is, rooted in the pre-modern
period) Islamic cultural traditions described above, as presented to
a Western audience as a kind of auditory travelogue. With the help
of program and liner notes, the putative aim of such recordings and
concerts is to document the worlds cultural diversity and educate
Westerners about it. However, despite claims of authenticity, such
performances are necessarily transformed, at least by the contextual shift to stage or CD (for example, Tabala 1992; Morocco I: The
Music of Islam and Sufism in Morocco; Sufi Music Village [London]
1997 [www.culturalco-operation.org]; Al-Tuni 2000).
World beat results from eclectic musical hybrids incorporat-
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Conclusion
From this diverse survey of Islamic music in Africa, several general
conclusions can now be drawn. First is the remarkable diversity of
Islamic sonic forms, as ritual practices adapt to local socio-cultural
conditions, yet generally without any sense of sectarian fissioning,
of having left the faith. The flexibility of Islamic music and
sound generally plays a critical role in such adaptation, as
Islamic performance contexts draw on local musical materials, and
as musical materials stemming from the Middle East fuse with
local musical structures, such as polyphonic drumming,
polyrhythm, and pentatonicism. The unity in diversity which
characterizes Islam in Africa may be attributed to a strong oral
504
tradition coupled with decentralized religious authority, particularly in Sunni Islam, imposing minimal formal ritual and doctrinal
requirements.
These requirements centre on discursive performance, allowing freer reign to local adaptation in non-discursive performative
dimensions. Sound, operating largely outside Islamic discourse,
whose details discourse is unable to precisely reference and therefore unable to precisely regulate, possesses the ability to adapt to
local conditions through absorption of local practices. While the
concept of music (musiqa), usually implying instruments
performed for entertainment, may occasionally be subjected to
discursive sanctions, the more fundamental concept of sound
(coupled with text) remains active and vital, thinly veiled behind
a myriad of terminological guises (adhan, tajwid, inshad, and
khutba). Musics power is all the greater for not being explicitly
recognized as such.
The broader picture of Islamic performance is thus one of ramification in its sonic-social aspect, threaded throughout by common
filaments of Arabic text, or at least core meanings, most centrally:
tawhid (affirmation of Gods unity), ibtihalat (supplication to
God), madih (praise for His Prophet), and tawassul (petitions to
Prophet and saints). It is the sense of connectedness, through a
genealogical network of performance tradition, rather than uniformity of performance, which supports a common Muslim identity
despite outward diversity.
Or, perhaps, because of it. The ability to adapt which gives
rise to the rich variegation of Islamic performative traditions is
also what has enabled Islam to expand by taking root in so many
different cultural soils across Africa. In particular, the ability of
music to adjust to local socio-cultural conditions, absorbing and
transforming local performance materials, while nevertheless
bearing core Islamic meanings, combined with the powerful
affecting presence of socially performed and locally meaningful
sound, representing Islam as a whole while remaining deeply
enmeshed in local meaning and local sentiment, and thereby
connecting, or at least mediating, between the broader world of
Islam and other worlds (pre- or extra-Islamic) which impinge upon
it, has enabled music to serve as a particularly effective agent of
Islamic da`wa (missionizing).
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Notes
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